Monday, June 20, 2005

Alright, so I have decided to share one of my academic tragedies. And I don't mean reading Shakespearean plays. When I was in the tenth grade(I think it was that year), we read Wuthering Heights. Now I don't really remember the plot. I just refreshed myself on the internet -- where was that when I was in high school. A love story of sorts between Heathcliff and Catherine, but they don't end up together. Anyway, I have probably pushed it out of my memory for other reasons. We were required to write a term paper on this book. We had to read critical reviews of the text, take nots on them on note cards. And then write the paper. The note cards were supposed to be turned in as well, cause that way the teacher could prove we actually did the work. Well, this paper was due friday before spring break. I went home one night that week to continue to work on the paper -- or start on it is probably more like it -- and when I got home, my note cards were not in my bag. I thought, "oh, they must be in my locker." well, much to my dismay, they weren't in the locker, and they weren't in the English class, but someone had remembered that they had seen them under my desk. I looked the whole school over. I even went digging in the dumpster, but they were no where to be found. And I had 2 days to finish the paper. What a spring break bust. Thank goodness the teacher was a friend, and she let me have the next grading period to get all the note cards done and finish writing the paper. I bet in this day and age of better computers, they don't have to use those darn notecards. It was a traumatic experience, ...and one I haven't thought about in a long time. It hasn't made that big of a scar. Seems to me I remember another traumatic english paper of mine in high school to. I was writing the paper and the computer crashed and it didn't save it. That was at 10 pm the night before the paper was due! I think I at least had a copy of it that I could type from. Anyway, enough traumatic high school stories.

Not much knitting here. I did swatch both the crayon and the elegance, and I have decided to use the crayon for the baby gift. I hope it works out. I will post some pictures later. My blue sweater is on hold for now until I can get this gift done.

6 Comments:

Wow! I'm sure that was very traumatic for a conscientious 10th grader. I've had some students in the same boat and, depending on how often they pull out the "life-and-death crisis" card, I would allow them to take extra time such as your teacher did. And yes, many teachers still do make students do note cards, which I thought was kind of silly since no one uses them in college. So, I never made my students do it. Since they had had to do it in 8th through 10th grades, they were always most grateful. However, they had to turn in photocopies of all their articles with the passages highlighted that they used in the paper. This really saved me time when grading, kept them honest, and made more sense all around, too--a win-win situation if ever I saw one. Sorry again about your horrible note card torture. Those things really should be outlawed.

I thought Wuthering Heights was the computer disaster and you had the cards to rewrite it. I'm sure you remember better, since they happened to you. :-) Regardless, they were both traumatic. Thank God for Ms. Hume!! Hope you're having a better week. Did you talk to K? Love ya,A

Oh yeah- I can add my memory from these tragedies - being sound asleep and waking to your blood-curdling scream when the computer crashed. NOT a nice way to be awoken. And them mom running upstairs thinking someone was in the house attacking you. It's kind of humorous now, but it certainly wasn't then.

This post just gave me a panic attack..no joke! And I've been out of high school 11 years! It was actually college that caused me more "last-minute" pain. I OFTEN waited until the night before to get my 20 page papers done. Thank GOD I'm done with school!